Skip to main contentWhile George Bush declared war on Iraq Monday night, halfway around the globe Portlander Joel Preston Smith prepared to head home with his photographs of the Middle East. Smith, a photographer and activist, spent seven weeks in Iraq earlier this year with the Iraq Peace Team, an international group working to prevent an escalation of violence in Iraq. He was researching a book to be called Living with the Enemy, about being an American in Baghdad.
In 1991, Smith moved to Portland after working as a photojournalist for the U.S. Army. He was a spokesperson and media coordinator for Oregon Health & Science University, and he also freelanced for The Oregonian. His work has been displayed at the Charlie White Gallery.
Smith's visa expired in March, and he went from Iraq to Gaza, where he has photographed Palestinian trauma patients and other aspects of life under the occupation. Emilie Raguso interviewed him by email over the past two weeks.
Willamette Week: What led you to Iraq?
Joel Preston Smith: It was my experiences in the Army that convinced me that the greatest danger to the principles we most value-democracy, justice, freedom-was the U.S. military itself. I wanted to see what it was like to live in a culture under the threat of war, and specifically to have the experience of living there as an "enemy." I was worried at first about telling people I was a former soldier; no one so much as batted an eye.
How did you get involved with the Peace Team?
I was in Iraq working on a book called Living with the Enemy. I wanted to understand what the daily lives of the Iraqi people were like, and to work on a book that would examine as many aspects of their lives as I could get access to. I went with the Iraq Peace Team because I knew people who'd worked with them in the past, and they provided enough reference material to allow the group to get me a visa from the Iraqi government. I made it clear from the start that I wouldn't be doing publicity for the group, that I was opposed to all wars, that I was opposed to the government of Iraq and to the U.S.-led war against the Iraqi people.
What was your living situation?
I was in Baghdad, at the Al Fanar Hotel on Abu Nuwas Avenue. I had a room with a balcony that overlooked about three miles of the Tigris River. Across from my balcony, maybe a half-mile off, I could see one of Saddam Hussein's (supposedly) 11 palaces. I used to sit out there late at night and wonder if debris from the bombing would reach the hotel.
What were you doing as a member of the Peace Team?
Wandering the streets of Baghdad, for the most part, usually alone, photographing people doing their jobs, kids playing, soldiers guarding pavement, peace demonstrations, art-gallery openings, politicians politicking, patients and doctors in hospitals, singers and musicians in concert, teachers and students in class, women with guns, and just about anything else you could think of-except military bases. That would have gotten me a very fast ticket out of the country.
What kind of response did people have about your being American?
When I would tell people I was from the United States, they-without exception-would say, "Welcome." They would invite me for tea, for coffee, for dinner, to see their children, to come to their art gallery, to sit inside their shop and talk about an American movie they'd seen. The three things Iraqi people seem to love best about American culture are American music (Britney Spears and Michael Jackson in particular, but don't hold this against them), American action movies and blue jeans. They are simply the most friendly, gentle, peaceful, decent, honest people I've ever met.
Were you ever in danger?
Maybe. I got bit by a monkey 30 seconds after I arrived in Baghdad, as soon as I walked into the Al Fanar Hotel. That was about the worst of it. I asked the desk clerk if I could pet the monkey. He said, "As you wish." I reached out, and the monkey grabbed my hand and pulled it up to the cage and sunk his teeth into my left palm, beside the thumb. The desk clerk thought nothing of it. Happens all the time.
Another interesting thing happened that was a little nerve-wracking that day. I was surrounded by about 150 women (in a militia parade) jumping up and down with their machine guns shouting, at me, "Down with Bush, down with U.S.A.," which they'd obviously been trained to do. I took a photo, while one woman was standing still, and turned my camera (it has a digital monitor) for her to see. Her eyes popped. Several of the women around her saw the photo and stopped jumping up and down waving their guns in the air. "Jamil! Jamil!" they started crying. "Beautiful! Beautiful!" That made a wave through the crowd and everyone wanted to see it. Then they started insisting, "Suhra, suhra!" and pointing at themselves. "Photograph me."
By this time they were giggling, talking among themselves, insisting on being photographed, and smiling at me through their burkas. In the instant I showed that woman the photograph, they stopped being artificial soldiers and started being what they truly were-beautiful women. They clearly made a choice: I can keep jumping up and down with my Kalishnikov, or I can have a portrait made. I'll take the portrait.
But there was one woman who hadn't given up. While I was shooting, she said to me in broken English, "Saddam Hussein good." I put the camera down and said (every one of them was wearing a burka; all I could see was the reaction in their eyes), "You think so? I don't think so. I think George Bush is no good, too. People are good." The woman beside her said "People good" back to me. She said this with a tone you hear when people are expressing something that's a fact, but that is for them both a realization and a confession.
The second woman immediately translated "people good" into Arabic. A murmur went through the crowd and I heard several women say in English, "People are good."
That was one of the greatest moments of my life. Not one of them disagreed. Not one pointed a gun at me, told me to get out, threatened me. There was no contention. Every one of us knew that people are good, that the leaders of our respective countries are destroying our land, our dreams, our families. But we ourselves are good. We are beautiful. We have the capacity, even when we have great power-and they certainly were well-armed-to see and state the truth. That moment came because I took a photograph, and the people who saw it stopped thinking of themselves as soldiers, as angry, as violent, as threatening, and simply became people who wanted to be seen for what they are: beautiful.
That's what I was doing in Iraq. That's what I'd like to spend the rest of my life doing-being a mirror for the beauty I find in all people. And doing this in a way that convinces them that that beauty is worth preserving.
Do you think the Iraqi people will be better off in the long run if Saddam's regime remains in place?
Absolutely not. Hussein and the Ba'ath Party constitute a repressive regime which denies freedom of expression and many of the principles of a free society to the Iraqi people. Terror reigns in the hearts of anyone who considers expressing dissatisfaction with the government. The president is mentioned in whispers, if at all.
So will the U.S. forces be welcomed?
The Iraqi people do not see the United States as a liberating force. After 12 years of sanctions, of seeing their children starved and their homes and families broken, they don't believe the U.S. government is suddenly going to reverse itself and become a peaceful and benevolent force in their lives. Hussein is not threatening to launch 400 cruise missiles a day against them-George Bush is. In their opinion, Hussein is not trying to starve their children, deny them clean water, prevent essential medical equipment and supplies from entering the country-George Bush is.
Did you talk about your views of the impending war?
I rarely told anyone that I was against the war. To know that I was an American was enough to give me a ticket to nearly anywhere I wanted to go, and anything I wanted to do. Taxi drivers would refuse to take my money. Shopkeepers, if they'd seen me on the street and come out to invite me to come in and sit, would not charge me for tea or coffee. Women would gush if I said hello. To even be spoken to by an American is something that many Iraqis seem to treasure. This is maddening to try to understand. I wanted to grab someone by the lapels and shake them and scream in their face. "WHY ARE YOU TREATING ME LIKE THIS? CAN'T YOU SEE WE ARE KILLING YOU? DOESN'T IT BOTHER YOU THAT WE ARE GOING TO MASSACRE YOU?" I was so shamed, so humiliated by their kindness in the face of who I was and what I represented. One day I simply broke down in public. I'd been there about 10 days. I was at the University of Baghdad, standing in line with about 50 Iraqi professors, waiting to be served at an outdoor banquet for U.S. professors who were visiting the campus. The lady in front of me was a linguistics professor. The lady behind me was a physicist. They were both Iraqis, and were in the stratosphere when it comes to intellect. I was having that feeling you have when you are in the company of people who are way out of your league in some way-that mixture of awe and embarrassment and gratitude. It was a beautiful day. Pots of tea were steaming under a canopy, a horse and English rider were crossing a field in the distance, people were laughing, dishing out plates of saffron rice and chicken. In those few minutes I completely forgot about the war, and about work.
And then I remembered where I was and where I was from. I looked around and imagined what would happen to these people and their families if the war began that night. I imagined the faces of the children I'd played with, the friends I'd made, and the tears started to roll. The two professors looked like they wanted to throw their arms around me and shield me (if you can imagine the irony of that), which made it worse.
So most of the "danger" was emotional. If you feel strongly attached to people, which I do, and you're easily broken by suffering, which I am, most of the damage done to you is self-inflicted. I stopped worrying about the Iraqis after three days or so, but I found myself watching the sky for U.S. bombers every day. It was getting killed by my "friends," not the Iraqis, that concerned me.
How do you explain their reaction to you?
Eventually, I started asking people, bluntly, "Why do you treat us so well? Don't you think I'm partly responsible for what's happening here?"
Invariably, the answer is, "We hate the American government. Not you. You are a person. You are not doing this. Your government is."
So I would, in frustration, trying to understand how they could make this distinction, argue with them. "But in America," I would say, "the people think of themselves as the government. The leaders get their power from the people. The leaders are supposed to do what the people ask them to do. This means that when our leaders do something like go to war, we feel responsible. We gave them the power to do it."
What was their response?
So they would say (I must have had this conversation, I swear, easily 150 times; it became a personal mission to me, to see if I could convince someone to blame me personally for what the United States had done, and is doing, to Iraq; I failed miserably), "Yes, but you are just one person. You cannot tell your president what to do." I realized that the concept of individuals being held responsible for the actions of leaders doesn't exist in the Iraqi mindset. They live at the whim of the government. They don't effect changes. They are affected. They don't participate in government, they cope with it.
The greatest failing of American "diplomacy" in the Middle East, and in Iraq in particular, is the erosion of the value of the concept of democracy and human rights, as they're characterized by the U.S. government and Western media. Most [people here] now equate the idea of democracy with murder, with chaos, with the economic strangulation of the poor. A surgeon at [Al-Wasa Hospital] in Gaza told me last night, after taking me on a tour of the seven rooms that held Palestinian boys who'd been shot by Israeli soldiers, "What is this thing democraty? You say you have democraty, but we read many American people opposed to this war with Iraq? How can you say you have democraty when we read in papers American people don't want Americans killing Muslims and your government do it anyway?"
I really couldn't answer him.
Were you involved at all with the Human Shield Mission in Iraq?
Only in poking fun at them. I called them the Human Shards. When I got tired of that, I called them the Targets. Not long after they arrived, people began referring to them collectively by their function: the human shields. No one ever referred to one of them by name, and it was as if they had already been vaporized and could not be referred to as living individuals. I thought the concept was ridiculous and futile. I seriously doubt, in light of the U.N.'s report that U.N.-imposed sanctions have killed more than 400,000 children under the age of five, that a few middle-aged peace activists occupying water-treatment and power plants were going to stave off a bombing run. If enough people did the same thing, put themselves in harm's way in order to protect the potential victims of war, then it just might work. Maybe beyond a certain point, Bush, Rice, Powell, Blair and the others might have a different view of the opposition if thousands of Westerners were willing to take the risks the human shields were taking. I mean, the Targets.
What about the International Solidarity Movement, a member of which was recently run over by a bulldozer in Rafah?
I know a couple of people who've worked in the ISM. My feelings about that group are considerably different than the "human shields" in Iraq. One of the major differences is that the human shields in Iraq were "shielding" sites that might be attacked, might not. The ISM people are standing in front of soldiers and bulldozers, and occupying homes that are known to be scheduled for demolition. The threat in the latter case is real. In the former, it's hypothetical.
The ISM people are remarkably brave, and they are putting their lives at risk-in the face of violence-every day. As I noted before, the human shields in Iraq spent a good deal of time (from what I could tell) shielding restaurants and moderately priced hotels. They (not all, but many of them) were press-hungry, dirty, rude, disrespectful toward Iraqi cultural norms, a traveling circus with a political agenda.
Regarding how I feel about the murder (I can't see as anything less) of Rachel Corrie: I'd like to write an article for WW about how Palestinians feel about what her death represents. The Palestinians I've spoken with seem to be of the same mind. The feeling is (I am quoting a taxi driver in Jericho), "If they (the Israeli Army) can murder an American and get away with it, what can they do to us? Anything they want. The American government, all they could say was, 'We want an investigation.' If the American government can't make more of a protest than that, for the murder of an American, then there's no hope for us."
My feeling is that her murder is going to fuel even more terrorist attacks. The Palestinians I've spoken with see this as a clear sign that the U.S. will not act to end the destruction of their homes and their lives.
Did the Peace Team ever worry that the Iraqi regime was using them for propaganda purposes?
The U.S. government believes that anyone who would speak out against war is a traitor. Freedom of speech, from many Americans' perspective, is only respected as a principle, not as something that should actually be put into practice. The Iraqi government believes that anyone who speaks out against this war is useful (but it represses free speech aimed against itself) and publicizes international peace movements. For myself, I doubt that I'd be deterred by the thought that if I showed people a photo of a beautiful Iraqi child, that might get me labeled as a traitor, or as a propagandist. Governments at war hate journalists who show the faces of those who are, or will be, killed. They churn out posters of "Huns" or "Japs" or "Yankee Aggressors" dripping blood from canines, buck teeth, tungsten skin-any manipulation of ethnicity in order to separate our sense of mutual identity. Visual propaganda is intended to present us with an image which evokes feelings of distance, anger, revulsion, confusion. The manufacturers of these images present them as near virtual truths. The work I did in Iraq examines very simple visual circumstances-a mother comforting a child, a child bagging wheat in a factory. It's devoid of a visual politic. I'm sure that some would see that as propaganda: Who the hell are you to show us a picture of a woman wiping tears from a child's face when we're trying to bomb them?
What the word "propaganda" means, in this context, is any image or information which makes it harder for a combatant to value those he's been told to hate, or to kill. Americans should have the courage to look into the faces of the people they are going to kill, without shrinking in fear from the face of a child in a photo.
What are you doing now?
Currently, I am in an Internet cafe in Gaza. It's pouring rain. Rain is running down the INTERIOR steps of the building. There is erosion in the concrete INSIDE the building, and I am wondering if the building is going to collapse. We are in an electrical storm.
I spent last night photographing at [Al-Wasa Hospital] in Jeron, south of the Jabali refugee camp in Gaza. There are eight trauma patients in the hospital here. Seven were shot by Israeli soldiers (some were throwing rocks at soldiers; one, a little girl 11 years old, was shot in the back and the right leg on her way to school as soldiers withdrew at 6:30 a.m. from an "incursion" into Jeron four days ago). One is a 4-year-old girl whose right femur was broken in a head-on collision. I hope to be home in about a week.
What can people here in Portland do to support the Iraqi people?
Don't assume that Muslims are terrorists. This is the basic deception, promulgated by the U.S. government and the media, that feeds hostility toward Middle Eastern peoples. It's heartbreaking to live with them-to see how kind, generous, honest and peaceful they truly are-and see how they're vilified. I would hope that Portlanders and Americans at large would re-examine their feelings toward Muslims and ask if their feelings are based on experience, or on perceptions related by the U.S. government and mainstream media. Each has a financial stake in war, and each is wildly misrepresenting the essential truths that characterize Muslims, and Iraqis in particular.
In that spirit, here's something to consider: On Jan. 18, 1991 (or thereabouts), CNN carried footage from the roof of a hotel in Baghdad (probably the Al-Rashid, where most of the journalists were staying). The footage showed the fire trails of missiles sailing into the city, large explosions and the resulting fires. The journalists who were filming the missile strikes were, for the most part, Americans, Canadians and other foreign nationals-mostly white, English-speaking, from countries represented by the "coalition forces" who were attacking the city.
Suppose for a moment that the situation was reversed, and that Iraqis were reporting from the roof, say, of the Benson Hotel, describing the destruction their missiles were doing to the city. How long do you think they'd be safe up there? Why did the Iraqis not touch those journalists? I think the answer, for me, has a lot to do with how peaceful the Iraqi people (not the government) are. And it's those people-as decent, kind and innocent as they are-who will do the dying.
WWeek 2015